Kona Coast is a 1968 film directed by Lamont Johnson.
A young woman named Dee is staggering around at a wild party on Oahu. She comes across the party's host, a heroin dealer named Kryder, who lets her have some dope—Dee as it turns out is an addict desperate for a fix. A drugged-out Dee then makes an angry, spiteful phone call to Sam Moran (Richard Boone), a burly, fifty-ish fisherman. Soon after, when it seems that Dee is overdosing, Kryder and his goons decide to murder her.
Sam, disturbed by the incoherent phone call, goes searching for Dee. When Dee's body washes up on the beach four days later, the cops write it off as either accidental drowning or suicide. Sam is not convinced, and he won't let it go, because as it turns out, Dee was his estranged daughter. He begins a one-man investigation to take down Kryder.
Also appearing are Vera Miles (Melissa Hyde, a recovering alcoholic and old girlfriend of Sam's), and Joan Blondell (Kitibell Lightfoot, proprietor of the rehab clinic where Melissa dried out, and sister to Sam's friend Charlie).
Tropes:
- Burial at Sea: Charlie asks for and after he dies gets "a real Hawaiian funeral", which apparently entails the deceased being sent out to sea in a canoe while the mourners throw leis.
- Cheerful Funeral: Charlie's funeral is followed by a big party at Akamai's bar. He tells Melissa it's "an Irish wake."
- Dance Party Ending: Kryder commissioned a luau from Kitibell (it's how she funds her rehab clinic) in order to lure Sam into a trap. After Sam defeats Kryder, Kitibell decides that the luau has been paid for so they might as well go ahead, and the film ends with everybody dancing on the beach.
- Death by Childbirth: In the backstory. It seems that Sam had a girlfriend named Mary who died giving birth to Dee. She made Charlie promise not to tell, and so Sam only found out about his daughter recently.
- Deliberately Monochrome: One of the Impairment Shots as Dee is suffering from an overdose of heroin has the film briefly flip from color to black and white.
- The End: The closing credits run over a shot of a Kona beach and the sun setting in the distance. After the credits, a final "ALOHA" pops up on the screen.
- Fan Disservice: Dee staggering around in a skimpy dress, and then eventually getting stripped to bra and panties at a wild party, as she is suffering from a heroin overdose.
- Foreshadowing: A drugged-out Dee calls up Sam on the phone and sarcastically calls him "Big Daddy." It seems like a nickname, but it's later revealed that Dee was Sam's daughter.
- Gosh Darn It to Heck!: As Sam tears away in a borrowed jeep, the man he borrowed it from objects, yelling "That's a jeep, not a flamin' surfboard!"
- High-Heel–Face Turn: Mim, as it turns out, was hired by Kryder to be a Honey Pot and lure Sam into a trap. But she becomes attracted to him despite the fact he's well more than twice her age, and can't go through with it.
- Kavorka Man: Sam is in his fifties, with a weatherbeaten face and somewhat overweight, and women are all over him. Sue the hot hula dancer jumps into his lap in the bar. As four women dance around Sam a little later, an amazed Melissa says "Are they all his?", and Akamai laughs and says he's seen Sam come off a boat "sleepy like a lizard" after a week out fishing, only for women to ditch their boyfriends and flock to Sam.
- Kensington Gore: Some very very fake-looking Kensington Gore blood when Sam gets beaten up and especially when Sam stabs Kryder with a harpoon at the climax (Kryder survives and is arrested).
- Meet Cute: Sam meets Mim the bikini-clad beauty when she's thrown into the water by some man for, apparently, refusing to put out. Later subverted when it's revealed that the meeting was deliberately arranged by Kryder, who wants to use Mim as a Honey Pot to lure Sam into his trap.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: After Kryder is told that Dee appears to be overdosing (his mook "gave her too much" dope), he decides to preemptively murder her by throwing her into the ocean. Why? To Make It Look Like an Accident, maybe? In any case Dee was definitely still alive when she got thrown overboard, as the cause of death was drowning.
- One-Book Author: The supporting cast was made up of Hawaiian locals, and it was the only film appearance for most of them, including Gina Villines (Mim) and Gloria Nakea (Dee).
- Pilot Movie: This was a proposed pilot for a TV series that got a limited theatrical release after CBS passed.
- The Place: Actually the first half of the movie takes place on Oahu. But after Charlie is mortally injured trying to save Sam's boat from burning, he asks to be taken to his home on the Kona coast of the big island of Hawaii, and Kryder and his goons follow Sam and the gang there.
- Scenery Porn: The production was obviously a cheap one for what was originally intended to be a TV movie, but the green mountains and crashing waves of Hawaii sure do look beautiful.
- Shaking the Rump: Multiple native Hawaiian women are shown hula dancing, which every time allows the camera to focus on their bottoms.
- Sissy Villain: Kryder, who has a vaguely effiminate manner, and is sneeringly evil. This is made explicit when one of Kryder's mooks refers to him as a "lousy f***t."
- Smart People Play Chess: Akamai Barnes is the proprietor of a Kona bar, but apparently he has an academic background, as he says he has a PhD in anthropology and was a sociology professor for 11 years. How do we know this is true? He has a chess set in front of him at the bar!
- Surprise Incest: In the backstory, and how Sam and Dee met. As Sam tells the story, he was hitting on this hot babe named Dee in a sleazy club when the woman running the place told him that he should back off, because Dee is his daughter.
- Time-Passes Montage: The running time is padded out a bit by a montage of Sam going around Oahu, asking questions about Dee's disappearance.
